


In Wanting to Silence Any Song

by nescias



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:21:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24776833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nescias/pseuds/nescias
Summary: The streets are filled with the Dead, and lives are flickering out one by one.Any Infected always go insane the same way, before becoming Dead. There is no other option, no escape once you've been bitten....So how has Yaz found a strange Dead more interested in boxes and shiny trinkets than infecting others?
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	In Wanting to Silence Any Song

Yaz quickly rifled through the debris on the floor, assorted objects piled haphazardly where a shelf had collapsed and dumped them.

Almost all of it was rotted beyond use and assaulted her senses. But after a moment of digging--there, at the bottom, a few packages of dried meat! She had never been so ready to cry with relief.

She wondered what herself from a month ago would think of her now. What would a police officer, dissatisfied but on her way up in the world, have to say about a skinny, tattered survivor shedding tears over off-brand jerky in a crumbling convenience store?

Yaz supposed it didn't really matter anymore. There was nobody left  _ except _ desperate survivors, nowadays. Nobody left who could judge her.

She cried, just a few drops, before slipping the packets into her bag and standing up. Over the shelves, she made eye contact with Ryan, who quickly grinned and held a crushed party-pack of chips up in offering. She shook her head in fond amusement, before dipping back down to another pile of rubble.

Quietly from the door, three taps. One-two three. Her eyes blew wide; that was their signal, the "bad shit is happening, get ready to run" sign. Her heart accelerated. Yaz saw Ryan pop up again as well, like a startled meerkat.

Graham came rushing through the front, closing it after him as quietly as possible, holding the flimsy glass door closed with his body weight. His eyes were wide, panicked, eyes dilated with a flush of adrenaline.

He licked his lips, and whispered, "four." If multiple Dead were traveling towards them--

She closed her eyes, mouthed a small prayer, then got to work. Other exits; roof access maybe? 

While Ryan moved to help Graham block the door from the figures they all could now see approaching, she vaulted over the counter to rattle the "employees-only" door. Locked, of course. She could try to smash the handle to see if that would free the door, but the sound would likely agitate the Dead even further. She checked for other means of escape--no windows in the bathroom, no other doors around the perimeter of the building. They were well and truly done for.

Well, if she wasn't going to escape, Yaz supposed she might as well go down fighting. She lifted the fire extinguisher off the wall just as the rattle of Dead bodies against the door finally turned into a crash as they smashed their way in.

Some part of Yaz's brain noted detachedly that it was the metal hinges to give in first, not the glass panels. Probably didn't matter, but it did mean that there would be no glass shanks to use in this battle.

Ryan and Graham threw themselves back into the building, each picking up twisted metal bars from the broken shelving.

Four Dead had limped in, foaming saliva at the sight of their prey. Who knew how many more were behind, but four--they might be able to do this. They  _ could _ do this, she had to believe, she had to be sure.

The first one reached out towards her. It was missing three fingers, an eye, and a chunk of its jaw, but if you could ignore the festering injuries and the silvery iris characteristic of the Dead, it would have been a handsome blonde man somewhere in its early thirties.

Shame she had no kindness left for this creature, not after seeing what they could do.

With a grip on the top of the heavy fire extinguisher, she hefted and swung it in an arc, slamming it into the side of the creature’s skull with an awful cracking sound. It went down, twitching but immobilized. She slammed the fire extinguisher down one more time, and it went still.

The next one managed to get a hand on her, fighting to grip and pull to bite, before Ryan used his metal rod like a spear. Although it hit and stuck, it only momentarily paused the creature instead of stopping it. It wasn’t until Graham’s makeshift spear went through the side of its head that it dropped.

The other two made it into the convenience store and advanced on them, burbling nonsense. They must have been attractive women, once. One of them had years of smile lines. Yaz felt sick.

Among them, their only remaining weapon was the fire extinguisher, and Yaz hefted it even as she realized it was no good--they had been pushed too far back in the shop, and with the Dead advancing together, even if she managed to take out one, the other would infect them before they could grab another weapon.

Another Dead followed in after them, its silvery eyes glinting behind a curtain of short blonde hair. Its coat was torn and blood splattered--which is to say, in much better conditions than most Dead’s, who tended more toward tattered than torn.

This one moved faster than the others, with no apparent injuries to its legs. It caught up to the other two halfway between the door and the back of the convenience shop the three humans had pressed themselves into.

Yaz tried to breathe. If she could just take one down with her, maybe her body would distract the other two enough for Graham and Ryan to escape? She knew it was a stretch, but that didn’t stop her desperate hoping that they would survive to tell her family where she had gone.

The new Dead looked at them with its gleaming silver eyes, before… looking away?

Its hands shot out, grabbing both of the other dead around the necks, before pressing in and somehow causing them to freeze in place before slumping bonelessly. The blonde one shifted its grip to the backs of their shirts, lifting the other corpses before tossing them against the back wall. The others didn’t seem dead, just immobilized.

Yaz felt her head spin. The Dead couldn’t do that.  _ The Dead couldn’t do that. _ She had stopped breathing altogether, not even daring to blink as she pressed back into the entirely immobile bodies of Graham and Ryan, all three of them watching the Dead and waiting for it to tear them to shreds, to devour all three of them. Was this one extra hungry? Was it somehow smart enough to want all three kills to itself?

It felt like an eternity that the living and Dead just stood there, staring at each other, three pairs of damp eyes meeting lifeless silvery ones.

Then the Dead turned its back and walked away, into the medicine aisle.

Yaz was stuck there frozen, suspended, for another long, long moment. Finally her crisis training slash apocalypse experience kicked in, and she stuttered back into motion.

The logical course of action would be to grab Graham and Ryan and run. But that Dead had just  _ protected _ them, seemingly at no benefit to herself. For the first time since this nightmare began, Yaz felt a small ray of hope.

With the other two members of her collection party still frozen at her back, Yaz crept towards the Dead, fire extinguisher raised warily.

The blonde Dead seemed to be pawing at what was once the small medicine area. Yaz wondered what she was looking for.

When Yaz was close enough to see the golden tint to her hair from the afternoon sun, she stopped.

“...Hello?”

**Author's Note:**

> I really tried but alas
> 
> 40% chance I continue this, 40% chance I'm not heard from again for another 6 months, 20% chance I rewrite it and try again. Place your bets, theydies and gentlethem.


End file.
